A container-handling installation typically has guide units that guide containers through the installation. These guide units are useful for guiding containers as they move from one processing station to the next. Among the known guide units are rotary guide units, such as star-shaped format parts or plant portions in which the containers are processed.
In general, guide units are adapted to the properties of the containers that they are supposed to guide. These properties include, for example, container form, container weight, and/or container size. In general, a guide unit used for a large container may not work so well for a small container, and vice versa. As an example, the ideal contact point of the format part on a short bottle relative to its position in the container-handling installation is substantially lower than it would be for a tall bottle.
As a result, when a container processing installation is to be switched over to process different containers, it is sometimes necessary to change the guide units. For this reason, the guide units are at least partly exchangeable so that on conversion of the container-handling installation from a first container size to a second container size, format parts of the guide unit can be exchanged.
A difficulty that arises is that it becomes necessary to maintain a suitable inventory of various format parts for different container sizes and designs. Another difficulty is that having to change format parts is complex and difficult. Format parts are usually firmly bolted to a body of the container-handling installation. Undoing such bolted connections takes time. This represents down-time during which the container processing installation cannot be productive.